Author
Topic: First Ever Bloomy Rind Cheese (Read 3170 times)

Today I got really froggy and decided to make two cheeses....We were out of Caerphilly and my wife asked me if I was going to make some of the yummy cheddary stuff I made a couple of weeks ago so that was number one. Since I was making a Rennet coagulated cheese, I decided I was willing to endure the pain of a double make. I used Pav's "Annette" recipe from WAcheese.com. Recipe:

first time I've used a mother culture so things are kind of dodgy at the moment. I heated the milk to 85 degrees and then added the CaCl and stirred in for two minutes Waited five more minutes and added mother culture and molds. Then added one drop rennet. Into the oven with the light on to keep it at 85 degrees. bout 7 hour later the milk was coagulated with about 1 inch of whey over the curd. Curd was very soft.....

Scooped the curd out of the pot and put it in two pyramid molds. Also had a 5 inch mold ready that held some of it but it just wasn't going to work out so at the expense of about 25% of the curd in the cylinder mold I just continued filling the pyramid molds. I really really really wish that folks would indicate with the molds how much they hold on average for the type of cheese they are intended for. Ok, I know that I have a data point and won't wonder again but as a neophyte it would have been a help.

All that being said, I think I drained it a little early. It was a solid mass and pulled away from the sides of the pot with 1 inch of whey over the top but the curd was extremely soft and moist. I guess I could have waited a couple of more hours.

Now for the big question that I have......all recipes for Valencay talk about flipping the cheese......seriously? HOW? Doesn't seem to work out since it'll be really soft and just squash out and be a pain.......help?

Other than the newbie wondering what the heck I'm doing I am looking forward to the moldy stuff!

I had always wondered about instructions to 'flip' cheeses in pyramid molds myself.

What I do is at the first 'flip' or two I loosen the cheese in the mold, slipping it down the side and back, rotating the mold in my hands, then setting it back on the draining rack open-end-up. Once the curd is sturdy enough to stand it, I invert the mold on my palm in the process. As the curd firms further I will invert it onto the draining rack for 10-15 minutes at first, then back into the mold, wide-end-up. I lengthen the time that the cheese sits unmolded until I'm confident that the cheese will hold it's general shape. You can still expect it to flatten/widen a slight bit in the long run.

Since these are most often lactic-coagulated goat cheeses the curd is usually rather delicate and from hooping to unmolding normally takes 36-48 hrs for me.

I'm curious to know how others approach this same concern.

Do let us know how this make turns out for you, Smurfmacaw. Congratulations on making the foray into bloomies. I think you'll be delighted with the process and the results.

Today they were firm enough to remove from the molds for a while so I guess I'll use Spellogue's technique....seems pretty good. They seem pretty nice so I'll salt them today later and ash them up tomorrow if I can get them dried out enough. I used Pav's recipe from wacheese so I'm going to follow his make (except for using the pyramid molds since I think they are cool). Anyway, here's the results so far.....

ok, I'd post a pic but they look exactly the same but they are black. The ash is a mess.....i blew my nose a couple of hours later and it was of course black......ick. Ok, five days until the PC starts taking over......

A lot of folks pre drain the curds for Valencay style. I mostly don't and I don't flip the molds, nor do I flip the cheeses as they are aging. I do give them a quarter turn daily on the mat to avoid stickage as the PC grows.

I've done the pre drain style make and it does solve some problems. The forms are more full/pyramids bigger because of releasing whey before they are put in the molds.

for the pyramid molds, each one will hold about 1/2 gallons worth of goat curd if you predrain. If you don't predrain they will still hold it but you'll have to let them settle a bit before adding the remaining curd. Thanks for the spreadsheet Boofer. After your posts on Pont l'Eveque I bought some at the local cheese monger. Tastes really good but the aroma will bring tears to your eyes......gotta make some!

1-3 days for geo, 2-8 days for p candidum. Should be full cover at 8-10 days.

And then start patting down the PC and manage it with temperature to avoid slipskin. Others with more experience can give more details but it always shocked me that the recipe books don't go into details about this. (at least the ones I've seen so far).

This is a fun cheese to make. I have a bunch of various size smallish molds and love making individual serving size cheeses. (except that I sometimes eat three in at one sitting because they taste so good!)

Very nice! There is nothing quite like a Valencay style cheese. It's a list topper for me. I figured I would give you a cheese when you cut into it, but heck I can't contain myself, you should have it now.

I like this style to have a rather sturdy pâté, and a nice thick margin of proteolitic translucency, and a small ball of slight chalkyness in the center. For me that means slowing things down in colder storage within about a day of the point in your last picture and continuing to pat down bringing the ash visible again later. I do my Poulligny Saint Pierres in a slightly gooey-er, more unctious style. It depends mainly on personal preference.